Can Hypnosis Help You Practice Self-Love?

It can give you a quiet, focused setting in which to practice, and practice is the right word. What psychologists study under the name self-compassion is a set of habits for treating yourself when things go wrong, and those habits can be learned through specific exercises. Hypnosis is one place to do them, not the source of the change.

What does self-love mean to a psychologist?

The closest research term is self-compassion: extending compassion to yourself in moments of failure, inadequacy or suffering. The Wikipedia article on self-compassion describes the definition by the psychologist Kristin Neff, which has three parts:

• Self-kindness: being warm toward yourself when you hit pain or shortcomings, instead of ignoring them or attacking yourself.
• Common humanity: seeing failure and suffering as part of the shared human experience, not proof that you are uniquely flawed.
• Mindfulness: holding painful thoughts and feelings in balanced awareness, neither suppressing them nor being swept up in them.

It is not self-pity, which the article describes as seeing yourself as a victim without the confidence to cope.

How is it different from self-esteem?

Self-esteem is an evaluation: how good you judge yourself to be. Self-compassion is a way of responding to yourself, especially when that judgment comes out badly. The article notes that research has found costs to chasing high self-esteem, including narcissism, distorted self-views and self-worth that depends on outside measures such as appearance, grades or approval. Self-compassion does not require you to rate yourself highly first.

Does practicing it make a difference?

A 2019 meta-analysis by Ferrari and colleagues, published in the journal Mindfulness, pooled 27 randomized controlled trials of self-compassion interventions. Compared with control groups, the interventions improved measures across 11 psychosocial outcomes, including self-compassion itself, stress, depression, self-criticism and anxiety. The authors also flagged limits: the interventions were too varied to compare by type, and publication bias may be present.

What do the exercises look like?

The article describes several:

• Treating yourself like a friend: imagining comforting a close friend in a tough situation, comparing that with how you respond to your own struggles, and applying the same kindness to yourself.
• A self-compassion break: during acute distress, repeating short prompts that cover each of the three parts, mindfulness, common humanity and self-kindness.
• A letter to yourself: writing about a flaw that makes you feel inadequate, from the perspective of an unconditionally loving imaginary friend.
• Chair work: speaking as your inner critic from one chair, then answering it as the criticized self from another, and letting the two talk.
• Motivating without the whip: noticing where you use self-criticism to push yourself, and trying a kinder way to motivate the same change.

What can a hypnosis session add to self-kindness?

As a setting for exercises that depend on imagination. A session can take you through the friend exercise or the chair dialogue in a relaxed, absorbed state, or end with you hearing your letter in your own mind. The article notes that self-compassion exercises generally take the form of writing, role-play or quiet reflection, so if trance does not suit you, those forms are the usual route.

Does self-compassion mean letting yourself off the hook?

No. Self-kindness, as Neff defines it, means being warm toward yourself when you meet your own shortcomings rather than ignoring them, so the shortcoming stays in view. The aim is to stop condemning yourself as a person while still facing what happened.

When does a harsh inner voice need more than practice?

If the self-criticism will not let up and you also have low mood most days, have lost interest in things or think about harming yourself, that pattern needs a clinician’s assessment, not only exercises. In the United States, call or text 988 if you are in crisis. Outside the United States, contact your local emergency number or crisis line.

A one-week journal

For seven evenings, write about one difficult moment from the day and answer three questions: What did I feel, without making it bigger or smaller? Who else has felt this? What would I say to a friend who went through the same thing? On the last evening, read the week back and notice whether the answers came more easily.

This article is general information, not medical or psychological advice; talk with a licensed clinician about your own situation.